135
The Creation of an
Ethnic Culture Complex Region:
Pennsylvania Germans in Central Ohio,
1790-1850
Timothy G. Anderson
T
he delimitation, description, and analysis of ethnic space and place
has occupied a central role in the literature relating to the cultural and
historical geography of the United States. From the contributions of
early luminaries such as Ellen Semple and John K. Wright, on through to the
more recent well-known work of Wilbur Zelinsky and Terry Jordan, American cultural and historical geographers have busied themselves with the mapping and analysis of ethnic spaces and ethnic cultural landscapes in order to
more fully understand the processes that have helped to shape and define
different culture areas of the country.1
More recently, a group of geographers has begun to debate, rethink, and
reevaluate the conceptualization of ethnic space in North America. Although
the focus of this debate centers around the concept of ethnic “homelands” in
North America, some researchers, most notably Michael Conzen, have attempted to define and classify other types of ethnic space within the parameters of the “homeland” discussion.2 This dialogue has proven to be most fruitful, with several sessions at recent national meetings of the Association of
American Geographers (AAG) having been organized around this theme and
an edited book on the subject due to appear at the end of this year.3
In a way, the ethnic homeland debate can be seen as an attempt to rethink
and reevaluate the traditional and long-standing map of American culture
areas that resulted from the Berkeley School-Chicago School method of looking at and analyzing the American landscape. This method emphasized the
concepts of core or hearth areas and first effective settlement, diffusion processes such as distance-decay, and a preoccupation with the rural, the traditional, and the folk in order to understand and map ethnic regions in North
America. Perhaps the penultimate outcome of the many years of studying the
American scene in this way is Wilbur Zelinsky’s 1973 national map of American culture regions depicting culture hearth regions and a nested hierarchy of
first-, second-, and third-order culture areas.4 While such a map is useful in
Timothy G. Anderson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Ohio University in Athens.
Historical Geography, Volume 29 (2001): 135-157.
136
T. Anderson
determining large-scale national and sub-national patterns, it does not (and
cannot) address local or regional ethnic landscape imprints and regions. The
homeland dialogue and debate has attempted to rectify this by devising a scheme
or methodology for classifying such ethnic places (Figure 1).
The proponents of the idea of the ethnic homeland concept argue that
such places possess certain qualities that set them apart from other types of
culture areas. These qualities—embraced and maintained by the ethnic group—
include, among others:
a sense of belonging to a specific place;
ethnic self-consciousness;
politico-socio-economic control in the homeland (this normally presupposes numerical exclusivity);
elaboration of a distinctive cultural system that functions in the homeland;
ecological adjustment to place over time.
Thus, in this line of reasoning, Zelinsky’s Mormon culture region in the mountain West becomes not just a culture area, but rather a homeland for a specific
culture group. Zelinsky’s Hispanic culture region in northern New Mexico
becomes Richard Nostrand’s Hispano homeland.5
Working within the homeland dialogue, Michael Conzen has proposed a
new map of American culture regions in which ethnicity plays a dominant
role rather than a subdued or generalized role as it does in Zelinsky’s representation.6 Borrowing a term from geology, Conzen likens Zelinsky’s sub-national
culture areas to ethnic “substrate” regions underlain by an ethnic “lithic” base,
in which “regional and local ethnic cultural influence” results from an underlying ethnic latency, for example a Germanic Midwest, a Mexican-American
Southwest, or a Yankee Northeast. In most such substrate regions, ethnic heritage or ancestry on the part of the population for which it is named may be no
more than 5 percent to 10 percent. Such ethnic regions range from multi-state
to continental in scale with an ethnic imprint that subtly underlies, colors, or
influences other landscape signatures. While only a handful of true ethnic
homelands are still extant, such ethnic substrate regions number in the dozens. Conzen also calls for the recognition of highly localized and distinctive
ethnic landscapes created by literally hundreds of different ethnic groups in
both rural and urban portions of the country. Conceptualized as “ethnic islands,” such ethnic regions are spatially compact—a neighborhood in urban
environments, a town or township in rural areas—and exhibit a characteristic
landscape that is dense and highly conspicuous. Examples of urban ethnic
islands are too numerous to mention (there are literally thousands of ethnic
neighborhoods in North America’s cities), and the American Midwest and
Great Plains are dotted with thousands of small ethnic islands that resulted
from the mass immigration of northwest Europeans in the 19th century.
This paper discusses the migration of Pennsylvania Germans from southeastern Pennsylvania to a five-county region of central Ohio in the late-18th
The Creation of an Ethnic Culture Complex Region
137
Type
Diagnostic Characteristics
Examples
Ethnic Homelands
Demographic Concentration/Exclusivity
(Arreola 1993; Conzen 1993)
Hispano Homeland
(n. New Mexico)
Sense of Place/Attachment to Place
(Nostrand et al., 1993)
Quebec
Ethnic Self-Consciousness
(Jordan 1993; Lamme & McDonald 1993)
Acadiana (Cajun)
(now probably moribund)
Ethnic Cultural Landscape Imprint
(Nostrand et al., 1993)
Navajoland
(Four Corners area)
Socio-Economic-Political Control
(Arreola 1993; Jordan 1993)
Tejano Homeland
(southern Texas)
Ecological Adjustment to Environment
(Nostrand 1993)
Anglo-Texan Homeland
(central Texas)
Ethnic Nostalgia and Boosterism
(Ostergren and Hoelscher 1993)
PA-German Homeland
(now moribund)
(southeast Pennsylvania)
Outside Recognition of Homeland
(Sheskin 1993)
Deseret (Mormon)
(Utah, s. ID, n. AZ)
Ethnic Islands
“Localized Ethnically and Racially Distinct
Settlements” (Conzen 1993)
Can be Either Rural or Urban
Little Italys
Spatially Compact
(Rural = Town or Township;
Urban = Neighborhood)
Chinatowns
Dense, Localized Ethnic Landscape Imprint
African-American
Neighborhoods
Varying Sense of Peoplehood
(Weak to Intense)
I9th-c. Northwest
European Midwest
Settlements
Varying Sense of Attachment to Place
(Weak to Intense)
Ethnic Substrates/
Archipelagos
Ethnic Latency (ca. 5-10% Ethnic Heritage/
Ancestry)
German (Midwest)
Regional and Local Ethnic Cultural Influence
Mexican-American
(Southwest)
Spatially Large (Several States to Continental)
Yankee (Northeast)
Figure 1. Some types of ethnic space in North America. Source: Journal of Cultural Geography
13 (1993). The contents of this entire issue of the journal are concerned with the homeland
concept and dialogue.
and early-19th centuries within the context of the ongoing ethnic homeland
discussion and debate (Figure 2). After briefly discussing and defining the
Pennsylvania Germans as an ethnic group and their initial settlement in the
Mid-Atlantic region, the paper employs several data sets to describe and delimit this group’s settlement in central Ohio. Next, the resulting cultural landscape imprint in this study region is defined and discussed. Finally, the paper
138
T. Anderson
Figure 2. Study Area Location in Central Ohio.
posits that the landscape legacy left by this ethnic group in the study region
does not easily or readily “fit” into the categories of ethnic space discussed and
defined within the context of the ongoing dialogue dealing with ethnic homelands and ethnic space. Instead, the landscape imprint left by the Pennsylvania Germans in central Ohio resulted in the creation of what might best be
called an “ethnic culture complex region.”
Historical Context
The cultural landscapes of Ohio reflect the legacy and influence of frontier settlement by a variety of ethnic and national groups. This frontier popu-
The Creation of an Ethnic Culture Complex Region
139
lation included significant numbers of migrants from the three primary East
Coast culture hearths and immigrants from a variety of northwestern European locations. Members of each of these groups tended to settle in specific
regions, imbuing each with a distinctive national or ethnic imprint. By the
end of the initial settlement period, ending roughly in the 1840s, extensions
of each East Coast culture hearth region had been established in Ohio, supplemented with a variety of rural immigrant ethnic islands.
The formation of such culture regions and outliers in Ohio resulted in
part as a function of national and geopolitical circumstances that governed
the alienation of land in the Old Northwest. The establishment of federalism
in the new Republic, the presence of Native American nations, and conflicting territorial claims in the trans-Mississippi West by eastern states forced the
federal government to deal with special problems regarding land alienation in
the newly acquired territory that had not been faced in the East.
In order to facilitate and encourage Euro-American settlement in the
Northwest Territory, the federal government attempted between 1785 and
1820 to solve the problem of land alienation by enacting a number of farreaching policies. First, it brokered the cession to the federal government of
most of the territory west of the Appalachians claimed by eastern states by
virtue of royal charters, some dating to the 17th century. Second, it successfully cleared the human barrier to Euro-American settlement represented by
Native Americans from the region through military intervention and territory-ceding treaties. Third, with Congressional approval of the Land Ordinance of 1785, the government established a systematic and orderly system of
land survey and alienation in the public domain.7
The original land-subdivision system in Ohio reflects the federal
government’s early land-alienation policies, modified by unique and important local circumstances (Figure 3). By 1786, all of the eastern states that had
claimed territory in the Old Northwest had agreed to relinquish such claims.
Connecticut and Virginia, however, successfully negotiated with Congress to
retain large tracts of land within the territory in order to satisfy debts (through
payment-in-kind of tracts of land) owed to state militia members who had
served during the Revolutionary War (the Connecticut Western Reserve and
the Virginia Military District, respectively). Likewise, in 1796, Congress reserved some two million acres within which to locate military warrants from
the Revolution that had not yet been satisfied (the U.S. Military District).
Congress also authorized the sale of two large tracts within the Ohio Territory
to private companies—the Ohio Company (1787) and the Symmes Company (1794). These companies surveyed and subdivided their respective tracts
before reselling parcels to private individuals, but both companies met with
only partial financial success.8
The unique subdivision of Ohio’s early settlement landscape played a decisive role in directing migrant streams from the East Coast. Early routes of
ingress into the Ohio Territory such as Zane’s Trace (1797), the National Road,
the Ohio River, and Lake Erie funneled settlers along specific routes, playing
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T. Anderson
Figure 3. Original Ohio land subdivisions. Sources: C.E. Sherman, Original Ohio Land
Subdivisions, Vol. 3 (Columbus: Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of
Geological Survey, 1925); Thomas Acquinas Burke, Ohio Lands: A Short History (Columbus:
Ohio Auditor of State, 1993); Hubert G.H. Wilhelm, The Origin and Distribution of Settlement
Groups: Ohio, 1850 (Athens, Ohio: Cutler Printing, 1982).
an important role in the settlement process as well. As a result, three distinctive subculture regions evolved in early Ohio. When mapped at the township
level, data from the 1850 federal census—the first to record the nativity of
each person enumerated—reveal these settlement regions (Figure 4). New Englanders took up residence overwhelmingly in the designated counties of the
Western Reserve. Southerners, dominated by those born in Virginia and Kentucky, congregated in and around the Virginia Military District and along the
Ohio River. A third group of early settlers from the Middle Atlantic culture
hearth region came to dominate the population throughout the rest of the
state, and were especially numerous in the central and east-central counties.9
This latter group of settlers produced a lasting imprint in the cultural landscapes of several Ohio areas. Many were members of an ethnic group that
The Creation of an Ethnic Culture Complex Region
141
played a central role in the building of the Middle Atlantic culture hearth
centered on southeast Pennsylvania—the “Pennsylvania Germans,” also known
as the “Pennsylvania Dutch.”
Pennsylvania Germans and Settlement in Central Ohio
Approximately 85,000 people from German-speaking regions of Europe
immigrated into the 13 North American colonies between 1683 and 1775, a
number which accounts for 27.5 percent of all non-African immigrants during this period. Nine out of ten came between 1717 and 1775 and settled in
the area of the lower Delaware Valley, but especially in Philadelphia, southeast
Figure 4. Place of birth of the non-Ohio-born population, 1850. Sources: 1850 Population
Manuscript Census Schedules; Wilhelm, The Origin and Distribution of Settlement Groups.
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T. Anderson
Pennsylvania, and western Maryland. Most hailed from the middle-Rhine region of southwestern Germany, centered on the kingdoms of Baden and
Württemburg, extending south and west into parts of Switzerland. Many came
from smaller villages and towns and traveled to North America in small groups
comprised of villagers hailing from the same locale. The majority were members of the landless or land-poor peasantry, the stratum of society most adversely affected by a series of economic and social crises that affected the region in the early-18th century.10
Though often described solely in terms of religious attitudes and traditions or mother tongue, the population commonly described as PennsylvaniaGerman was, and is, in fact not a wholly homogeneous ethnic or national
group. Defining the exact ethnic nature of the group, then, is rather problematic. In general, the term refers to the descendants of the thousands of Germanic immigrants that settled in southeastern Pennsylvania and the lower
Delaware Valley between 1683 and 1835.11 Though not entirely ethnically
cohesive, this population nevertheless was united by several cultural characteristics that set it apart from other groups. First, most members of the group
hailed from a common area of origin in Europe—southwest Germany and
parts of Switzerland. Second, most spoke “Pennsylvania German,” basically
the rheinpfälzisch dialect that was spoken in the Palatinate and the Upper
Rhine Valley at the time of the migration to North America, combined with
loan words from both High German and English. The dialect is probably a
mixture of several dialects spoken in the three major source areas of
Württemburg, the Palatinate, and Switzerland. Over time, in North America
the individual characteristics of the three regional dialects came to be modified and homogenized into a dialect that was in general uniform.12 Third, a
Reformed and Anabaptist religious background and tradition united the Pennsylvania Germans. Most were members of four broad Protestant groups—
Lutherans, German Reformed, the Anabaptist Pietistic sects (Amish, Mennonites, and Schwenkfelders), and the Moravian church—each of which traces
its origins ultimately back to the Reformation of the early-16th century. The
German-speaking members of the Lutheran and Reformed movements came
to be known as “church Germans.” Members of the various Pietistic sects,
which emphasized brotherhood within a community of believers, came to be
called “house Germans.”13 Methodism significantly affected the German-speaking population in North America. In southeast Pennsylvania, two separate
Wesleyan churches emerged as part of the Methodist revival in the late-18th
and early-19th centuries—the United Brethren in Christ, founded by Philip
Otterbein in 1789, and the Evangelical Association, established by Jacob
Albright in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, at about the same time. These two bodies
merged in 1947 to form the Evangelical United Brethren (EUB), and in 1964
the EUB merged with the United Methodist Church. The Reformed Church
in the U.S. eventually merged with the Evangelical Synod in North America
to form the Evangelical and Reformed Church; in 1949 this body joined with
the Congregational Christian Churches of the U.S. to form the United Church
The Creation of an Ethnic Culture Complex Region
143
in Christ (UCC).14 Members of both the EUB and the UCC were influential
in the early frontier settlement of the Ohio study area under scrutiny in this
paper. Fourth, the Pennsylvania Germans developed a distinctive agricultural
system in southeast Pennsylvania during the colonial era that was diversified,
extensive, and commercially oriented. Such features distinguished the system
from those established in New England (a rather intensive and subsistencebased system) and Tidewater Virginia (a coerced-labor, cash-crop monoculture) during the colonial era. The Pennsylvania Germans used their land to
produce a wide variety of both crops and livestock. Wheat became the primary grain crop, but other grains such as rye, oats, barley, and corn, as well as
forage and hay crops, were rotated in a three- to four-year scheme. The most
important livestock animal was the cow, with horses serving as the most important beasts of burden.15 Fifth, the diversified and market-driven agricultural system that developed among Pennsylvania-German farmers, coupled
with Germanic cultural baggage imported from Europe, resulted in the creation of a distinctive cultural landscape imprint in southeastern Pennsylvania.
The most distinctive and diagnostic element of this landscape is the forebay bank barn, the term stemming from an upper-level extension projecting
over the front stable wall. Adapted from a variety of Swiss forebay types, this
barn gained distinctiveness in colonial America due to its large size and its
two-level floorplan—larger than New England—the lower level functioning
as a stable and the upper housing threshing and storage. This multipurpose
barn effectively served the needs of a diversified and extensive agricultural
system.16 A variety of folk housing forms emerged in southeast Pennsylvania
during the colonial era, but contrary to the bank barn, none is affiliated solely
with the Pennsylvania Germans as a group. Rather, the house types of the
Middle Atlantic culture hearth in general reflected the multiethnic nature of
early settlement there, with Swedish, Dutch, German, and English contributions, influenced later by popular styles (e.g. Federal and Georgian styles).17
The most distinctive Pennsylvania-German influence on folk housing and
folk art tended to be in decoration, iconography, motifs, and color. Examples
include the practice of painting or carving signs and decorations (sun wheels
and bursts, swastikas, circles, tulips, and doves) on material objects, most conspicuously on barns, but also on such objects as furniture, chests, gravestones,
and bibles. Many writers have argued that such folk art is heavily invested
with religious meaning, but it is much more likely that it simply represents an
outward sign of prosperity or an early form of conspicuous consumption.18
The five traditions—area of origin in Europe; dialect of German, Reformed and Anabaptist religious background, a distinctive agricultural system; and a distinctive material culture and cultural landscape imprint—united
the various Germanic ethnic groups that settled in southeast Pennsylvania
during the colonial and early national periods into a group that can accurately
be referred to as Pennsylvania-German.
Beginning in the 1770s, thousands of Pennsylvania Germans began to
move out of their Pennyslvania homeland into western portions of the colony,
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T. Anderson
the northern Shenandoah Valley, southern Ontario, and central Ohio. This
large-scale migration, foreshadowed by rising land prices and quitrents, poor
soil conservation, stagnant farming technology, and divisions of holdings over
successive generations led, over time, to decreasing returns on investments in
southeastern Pennsylvania.19 The migration experiences of four families that
were prominent in the frontier settlement of Fairfield County, Ohio, culled
from genealogical and family history records, provide a small, but nevertheless
illustrative example of this movement (Figure 5).20 Members of these families
began to move north and west into Union and Northumberland Counties in
the 1760s and 1770s from Berks and Lancaster Counties, where the families
had settled only some 30 years after their initial immigration from Germany.
Their stay in these counties did not last very long either. Between 1804 and
1806, all but a few members of these families migrated to central Ohio. Such
“short-range” frontier migrations appear to have been very common during
this period. Robert Mitchell has shown that successive migrations, following
the frontiers of settlement, facilitated the accumulation of capital through the
profitable sale of land and the purchase of less-expensive land (often public
domain land) in frontier regions. In the case of the Pennsylvania Germans,
rising population densities and the practice of impartible inheritance resulted
in increasing numbers of younger sons having to migrate to frontier regions in
order to find less-expensive land and start their own families.21 Members of
the Anabaptist sects, in particular the Amish, followed similar processes of
migration from a core region in southeast Pennsylvania to frontier regions.22
Data from the 1850 census reveals the significance of Pennsylvania Germans in Ohio’s frontier settlement. By this date, the state’s population had
already expanded to nearly two million. Most of the state’s population, about
67.5 percent, was born in Ohio. The rest, about 32.5 percent, claimed nonOhio nativity. Of this migrant population, one in four were foreign immigrants (Table 1). While the non-Ohio-born population hailed from many different states, by far the most numerous were those born in the mid-Atlantic
region, especially Pennsylvania. Of the nearly 500,000 Ohioans born in another state, fully half came from the Middle Atlantic states. Of these, four in
ten claimed Pennsylvanian nativity and a significant number were of Pennsylvania-German descent.23 When mapped at the civil township level, it is clear
that the Pennsylvania Germans who moved to Ohio tended to settle among
each other in specific places, among those of like ancestral and ethnic identity
(Figure 6). This map shows that native Pennsylvanians in 1850 accounted for
over 50 percent of the non-Ohio-born population in two primary regions of
the state. In terms of both raw numbers and percentage of all migrants, the
densest area of settlement occurs in an east-west belt bordered by the Connecticut Western Reserve on the north and the U.S. Military District on the
south (present-day Wayne, Ashland, Richland, Stark, Columbiana, and
Mahoning counties). A second area of dense settlement occurs in central Ohio,
clustered around the city of Lancaster along the former route of Zane’s Trace,
The Creation of an Ethnic Culture Complex Region
145
County Seats
Locations in Family Genealogies
Other Villages
1 David Leist, ???
2 Leist Family, 1768
3 Leist Family, 1807
4 Valentine Reber, ???
5 Johannes Pontius, 1770
6 Nicholas Pontius, 1816
7 John Pontius, ???
8 Jacob Dresbach, 1773
9 Dresbach Family, 1804-1811
Figure 5. Migration of the Dreisbach, Reber, Leist, and Pontius families to Ohio, 1768-1816.
Sources: Mary Sue Leist-Parsons, Leist and Allied Families, 1690-1990 (Manuscript Copy,
1992); Joseph Edison Pontius, The Ancestors and Descendants of Jacob Franklin Pontius,
1873-1953 (Manuscript Copy, 1972); http://www.gentree.com/databases/Dreisbach/
Dreisbach1.html/.
in parts of Fairfield, Perry, Ross, Pickaway, and Hocking counties. The remainder of this paper will focus on this latter region to illustrate the cultural
landscape imprint created by Pennsylvania-German settlers.
T. Anderson
146
An Ethnic Culture Complex Region
Cultural geographer Hubert Wilhelm maintains that, in general, the locations chosen by specific frontier migrant populations depended most upon
the cultural background of the group and their time of arrival in frontier regions.24 In the case of the Pennsylvania Germans in Ohio, these influences
were critical. The principal routes of ingress from Pennsylvania provided relatively easy access to locations underlain by especially fertile soil and were, as it
happens, available for purchase at the time of the initial migrations. The area
of Pennsylvania-German settlement centered on Fairfield, Perry, Ross, and
Pickaway counties lay along the route of Zane’s Trace and is situated along the
Table 1. Ohio Nativity, 1850
Place of Birth
Number
% of Total Population
1,980,329
66.2
190,396
75,442
60,741
9.6
3.8
3.1
326,579
16.5
83,300
11,549
7,822
4.2
0.6
0.4
102,671
5.2
20,478
16,437
22,428
1.0
0.8
1.1
59,343
2.9
Other United States
9,724
0.5
Foreign Immigrants
145,992
7.4
Black Population
(state of origin n.a.)
25,279
1.3
1,980,329
100.0
Ohio
Pennsylvania
New York
Other Mid-Atlantic
(DE, MD, NJ)
Subtotal
Virginia
Kentucky
Other South
(AL, FL, GA, NC, SC, TN)
Subtotal
Connecticut
Massachusetts
Other New England
(ME, NH, RI, VT)
Subtotal
Total
The Creation of an Ethnic Culture Complex Region
147
Figure 6. Migrants born in Pennsylvania, 1850. Sources: 1850 Population Manuscript Census
Schedules; Wilhelm, The Origin and Distribution of Settlement Groups.
margin of the Wisconsin glacial moraine, affording the region soils of high
quality underlain by glacial till (Figure 7). As such, this was an area where the
Pennsylvania-German tradition of extensive mixed commercial farming could
be practiced much like it had been in southeast Pennsylvania with relatively
few changes.
Biographies of early settlers contained in county histories and atlases from
the 1870s reveal that Pennsylvania-German families with origins primarily in
the southeastern Pennsylvania counties of Berks, Lancaster, and Bucks began
to settle on public domain lands in the study area of central Ohio (Figure 5) as
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T. Anderson
Table 2. Pennsylvania Nativity in the Study Area Townships
Township
Pop.
PA
%PA
All Migrants
%PA
1,788
626
2,656
2,289
1,739
2,113
5,309
2,901
1,164
2,011
1,776
1,218
2,544
2,130
215
61
240
327
225
236
429
256
153
267
152
180
343
143
12.0
9.7
9.0
14.3
12.9
11.2
8.1
8.8
13.1
13.3
8.6
14.8
13.5
6.7
417
135
513
536
400
435
1,183
437
274
482
429
288
718
495
51.6
45.2
46.8
61.0
56.3
54.3
36.3
58.6
55.8
55.4
35.4
62.5
47.8
28.9
30,264
3,227
10.5
6,742
47.9
Perry Co.
Jackson
Reading
Thorn
1,740
3,984
1,847
152
494
223
8.7
12.4
12.1
280
902
457
54.3
54.8
48.8
Subtotal
7,571
869
11.5
1,639
53.0
Pickaway Co.
Circleville
Pickaway
Salt Creek
Washington
3,842
1,425
1,844
1,099
410
163
268
217
10.7
11.4
14.5
19.7
1,041
363
415
272
39.4
44.9
64.6
79.8
Subtotal
8,210
1,058
12.9
2,091
50.6
Ross Co.
Cole (Colerain)
Green
1,398
1,994
189
185
13.5
9.3
310
432
61.0
42.8
Subtotal
3,392
374
11.0
742
50.4
Hocking Co.
Good Hope
Laurel
Marion
Perry
635
1,126
1,746
1,217
45
60
126
164
7.1
5.3
7.2
13.5
95
195
270
268
47.4
30.8
46.7
61.2
Subtotal
4,724
395
8.4
828
47.7
54,161
5,923
10.9
12,042
49.2
Fairfield Co.
Amanda
Auburn
Berne
Bloom
Clear Creek
Greenfield
Hocking
Liberty
Madison
Pleasant
Richland
Rush Creek
Violet
Walnut
Subtotal
Totals
Source: 1850 Population Manuscript Census Schedules.
The Creation of an Ethnic Culture Complex Region
149
early as the 1790s.25 By 1850, nearly 6,000 Pennsylvania-born persons resided
in the region. This represented only about 11 percent of the total population
of the area, but fully half of the non-Ohio-born population (Table 2). Given
the fact that the 1850 census was taken too late to include all of the firstgeneration migrants, the latter figure probably more accurately reflects the
actual percentage of the population in the study region with PennsylvaniaGerman ancestry at the time the census was taken.
Pennsylvania Germans were among the first effective settlers in the study
region and brought with them many aspects of the agricultural system practiced in Pennsylvania to Ohio, thereby transplanting several cultural landscape elements to Ohio. This has left an indelible mark on the study area that
is part Germanic, part Euro-American, and part Pennsylvania-German. This
landscape includes three diagnostic structures and features that together constitute a distinctive culture area similar to, yet at the same time different in
important ways from, the hearth area in southeastern Pennsylvania (Figure 7).
The most conspicuous element of this cultural landscape is the widespread
occurrence of the Pennsylvania forebay bank barn type, which in form, style,
and construction technique has antecedents not only in Pennsylvania, but in
Cities
Villages
Forebay Bank Barns
Pennsylvania-German Churches
Pennsylvania-German Cemeteries
John Leist Houses
Bloom Civil Townships
Figure 7. Pennsylvania-German diagnostic landscape features in Fairfield, Perry, Hocking,
Ross, and Pickaway counties, Ohio. Source: Author’s field observations.
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T. Anderson
Germany and Switzerland as well (Figure 8). Indeed, field reconnaissance in
1999 resulted in the enumeration of at least 68 extant examples of forebay
bank barns. Given that barn form is often a function of the agricultural system employed by its builders, it is not surprising that the Pennsylvania barn
moved westward with Pennsylvania-German settlers. Data from the 1850 agriculture manuscript census schedules for Fairfield County reveal a continued
reliance on both crops and livestock as outputs in an extensive mixed commercial farming system (Table 3). The most significant modification of the
system brought from southeast Pennsylvania is apparent from the data recording acreage devoted to various grain crops. Whereas wheat was by far the most
important grain crop in Pennsylvania, in Ohio maize (corn) quickly became
most dominant. Corn was fed to cattle and hogs for sale in Baltimore (beef )
and Cincinnati (pork) and performed extremely well on the glacial till covering most of central Ohio.26 The Fairfield County area was becoming one of
Figure 8. Pennsylvania forebay bank barn near Laurelville, Pickaway County, Ohio. Source:
Photo by author in January 1999.
the premier agricultural regions of Ohio by the 1840s and 1850s as the area
became linked via canals and roads with markets both in the Midwest (Cincinnati and Chicago) and along the Atlantic seaboard.27 With a continued
reliance on both livestock and crops, the forebay barn remained a part of the
Pennsylvania-German farming landscape in Ohio as it served the twin purposes of hay and grain storage and of livestock stabling. Although the basic
form of the forebay barn was repeated on those built in Ohio, including the
occurrence of at least half a dozen of the 18 variant forms of the barn identified by Robert Ensminger in his landmark study, some minor changes set
many of them apart from those in the southeastern Pennsylvania hearth region.28 First, the use of stone as a construction material for anything other
than a foundation is extremely rare on the barns surveyed in the study area.
The Creation of an Ethnic Culture Complex Region
151
Table 3. 1850 Agricultural Census Data,
Pleasant, Richland, and Greenfield Townships, Fairfield County, Ohio
Pleasant Township (197 Farms)
N
Improved Acres
14,918
Unimproved Acres
8,465
Horses
824
Milk Cows
817
Other Cattle
1,154
Sheep
2,586
Hogs
2,162
Wheat (bu.)
24,437
Rye (bu.)
809
Corn (bu.)
130,711
Oats (bu.)
15,115
Mean/Farm
75.7
43.0
4.2
4.1
5.9
13.1
11.0
124.0
4.1
663.5
76.7
Number With
Any (%)
197 (100.0)
184 (93.4)
194 (98.5)
193 (98.0)
160 (81.2)
172 (87.3)
191 (97.0)
184 (93.4)
25 (12.7)
192 (97.5)
163 (82.7)
Richland Township (131 Farms)
N
Improved Acres
9,008
Unimproved Acres
5,798
Horses
490
Milk Cows
472
Other Cattle
547
Sheep
3,113
Hogs
1,436
Wheat (bu.)
11,517
Rye (bu.)
559
Corn (bu.)
65,986
Oats (bu.)
8,412
Mean/Farm
68.8
44.3
3.7
3.6
4.2
23.8
11.0
87.9
4.3
503.7
64.2
Number With
Any (%)
131 (100.0)
125 (95.4)
129 (98.5)
131 (100.0)
101 (77.1)
112 (85.5)
123 (94.0)
118 (90.1)
15 (11.5)
128 (97.7)
84 (64.1)
Greenfield Township (185 Farms)
N
Improved Acres
14,245
Unimproved Acres
8,975
Horses
708
Milk Cows
708
Other Cattle
1,069
Sheep
3,251
Hogs
2,524
Wheat (bu.)
23,825
Rye (bu.)
864
Corn (bu.)
155,317
Oats (bu.)
9,802
Mean/Farm
77.0
68.5
3.8
3.8
5.8
17.6
13.6
128.8
4.7
839.6
53.0
Number With
Any (%)
185 (100.0)
162 (87.6)
179 (96.8)
181 (98.0)
143 (77.3)
143 (77.3)
178 (96.2)
168 (90.8)
19 (10.3)
180 (97.3)
108 (58.4)
Source: Agriculture Manuscript Census Schedules, 1850.
152
T. Anderson
Rather, they are built almost entirely of wood, with sawn lumber covering a
hand-hewn timber frame. In the Pennsylvania hearth region, both stone and
wood or a combination of the two commonly appear as construction materials.29 Second, the characteristic forebay on many Ohio barns is either partially
or fully enclosed, that is, supported by timbers on one or each gable end.
Third, the presence of barn decoration (so-called “hex” signs) is almost entirely absent on the extant forebay barns in the study region. Field reconnaissance has documented only one barn in central Ohio with such decoration.
Some 10 of the 68 forebay barns in the study area exhibit a relatively rare
modification of the standard Pennsylvania barn form—the so-called “double
overhang” Pennsylvania barn. This modification is also found in southeastern
Pennsylvania (but very rarely), distinguishable by two forebays rather than
one. Hubert Wilhelm has identified 10 such barns in Fairfield and Perry counties, attributing their occurrence here to “local vernacular practice among a
crew of carpenters,” and to aesthetic “balance.”30
A second element of the Pennsylvania-German cultural landscape established in the study region is the nearly ubiquitous occurrence of the I-house
with Federal decorative elements. Unlike many folk houses in the southeast
Pennsylvania hearth, the dwellings built by early Pennsylvania-German settlers in the study area reveal little with regard to the German ancestry and
ethnicity of their builders, at least in terms of type, floor plan, and form.
Instead, they reveal aesthetic tastes and ideals popular at the time. Whereas
the Quaker-plan or “four-over-four” house became the dominant folk house
in the mid-Atlantic hearth region, the I-house became the preferred type built
in the Ohio study area. Characterized by a basic plan with side-facing gables,
one-room depth, at least two rooms in width, and two stories in elevation, the
I-house became one of the most common folk house types in North America.
Initially introduced in the Chesapeake Tidewater region during colonial times,
it was built into the 20th century throughout a large region of the U.S., as far
north as Pennsylvania and as far west as the Great Plains.31 The Federal style,
popular at the time, influenced the characteristic houses built by Pennsylvania
Germans in central Ohio during the late-18th and early-19th centuries. Becoming popular along the East Coast around the time of the Revolution, its
popularization can be linked to a renewal of interest in Greek and Roman
architecture and forms dating from the Renaissance. This combination resulted in houses characterized by an emphasis on verticality, symmetry, delicate ornamentation, and careful proportion.32 In the study area, perhaps the
most striking examples of I-houses with Federal ornamentation are four houses
built in Fairfield County between 1817 and 1827 by John Leist, who migrated from Pennsylvania in 1807 and became a well-known public figure, as well
as a master builder and carpenter (Figure 9; locations detailed in Figure 7).33
A third diagnostic element of the ethnic cultural landscape in the study
area is a religious landscape highlighted by rural churches and cemeteries that
are telling reminders of the Protestant Reformed tradition of the early Pennsylvania-German settlers. The most common denominations established by
The Creation of an Ethnic Culture Complex Region
153
Figure 9. The John Leist farm at Dutch Hollow, Fairfield County, Ohio, ca. 1875. Note the
brick I-house with Federal ornamentation and accompanying forebay bank barn. Source:
L.H. Everts, Combination Atlas Map of Fairfield County, Ohio (Philadelphia: Gale Research
Company, 1875): 76.
the earliest settlers in the study area were German Reformed, Evangelical
Lutheran, and United Brethren in Christ (UBC). Recall that the UBC merged
with the Evangelical Association to form the Evangelical United Brethren (EUB)
in 1947 and that the EUB merged with the United Methodist church in 1964,
so only a few (and now abandoned) church structures from these two denominations still exist. But most of the rural Methodist churches in the study
area trace their origin to early UBC and EUB denominations established by
the earliest Pennsylvania-German settlers. Ubiquitous throughout this landscape, then, are small community churches—Reformed, Evangelical Lutheran,
and Methodist—that dot the rural countryside (locations detailed in Figure
7). Most of the Methodist churches date only to the 1960s, but congregations
built many of the standing Reformed and Evangelical Lutheran structures as
early as the 1880s. The Protestant background of the Pennsylvania Germans
brought with it a rejection of overt iconography and ornate architecture. Most
of these churches display simple construction, often with an austere bell tower
or cupola, and white paint (Figure 10). Inside and out, the absence of overt
religious iconography is conspicuous. More often than not, the church is adjacent to a cemetery, such that the rural Protestant church and accompanying
cemetery together encompass a third primary cultural landscape feature in the
region.
154
T. Anderson
Figure 10. St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church and Cemetery, Fairfield County, Ohio. Source:
Photo by author in January 1999.
Conclusions
The cultural landscape created by Pennsylvania Germans in central Ohio
is a conspicuous reminder of the richly textured ethnic landscapes of North
America. This paper has identified three separate elements of this landscape—
forebay bank barns, brick I-houses with Federal ornamentation, rural churches
and cemeteries—that occur together in a dense enough distribution in the
study area to distinguish it as a separate culture area. Exactly what kind of
culture area, however, is problematic. Set within the ongoing dialogue among
some cultural and historical geographers concerning American ethnic homelands and regions, the area does not conform to the definitive parameters of
any of the spatial territories proposed, discussed, or theorized for ethnic settlements (Figure 1).
While the homeland debate has provided a useful new context within
which to view and categorize different kinds of ethnic space in North America,
the type of ethnic area I have described in this paper does not fit easily into the
existing hierarchy of ethnic spaces. As a result, and at the risk of adding jargon, I argue that another category that includes such places can be added to
the mixture. Perhaps best described by the term “ethnic culture complex region,” I posit that such places can be conceptualized as “outliers” of either
ethnic homelands or culture hearth regions, secondary areas of settlement by
members of an ethnic group that are “near” the homeland or hearth area both
The Creation of an Ethnic Culture Complex Region
155
in a geographic sense and a temporal sense. Culture complex regions like the
one I have described in this paper differ significantly from ethnic homelands
and ethnic islands:
in size, such areas are smaller than a homeland or substrate region but
larger than ethnic islands, on the order of a county or even several counties;
there is a significant and visible ethnic landscape signature that is easily
identifiable, but it is a landscape that has been modified—diluted one
might say—from the homeland or hearth area;
the number of people with the particular ethnic ancestry or heritage does
not constitute an absolute numerical majority of the total population,
rather it may be as low as 40 percent to 50 percent;
there is little or no sense of “peoplehood” on the part of the members of
the ethnic group today;
there is little evidence of ecologic adjustment to place.
Given these parameters, one might conjecture that there are dozens, if not
hundreds, of such ethnic places and spaces in North America. Some examples
might be other multi-county areas settled by Pennsylvania Germans from a
southeastern Pennsylvania homeland such as southern Ontario, parts of eastern Ohio, and the mid-Shenandoah Valley; the Western Reserve of northeastern Ohio settled by Yankees from the New England culture hearth; the German Hill Country of central Texas; Amish regions in east-central Ohio and
northern Indiana; or Czechs in rural east-central Texas.34 Such ethnic culture
complex regions may be viewed as “intermediate” ethnic regions. Many are
temporally intermediate in terms of the date of their settlement between the
colonial era, when hearth areas were formed, and later frontier settlement dating to the late-18th and 19th centuries when many ethnic islands were formed.
They are also geographically intermediate in terms of their location between
the East Coast hearths and the Midwestern and Great Plains ethnic islands. As
outlined in this case study, the ethnic culture complex landscapes reflect their
intermediacy, in part indicative of the landscapes of the hearth or core areas
that spawned them, in part representative of the moderating and diluting effects of other population groups and national cultural trends and processes.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
Karl B. Raitz, “Ethnic Maps of North America,” The Geographical Review 68:3 (1978): 335-350.
Although now somewhat dated, Raitz’s article provides a rather comprehensive overview of the most
significant contributions of geographers in this field.
Michael P. Conzen, “Culture Regions, Homelands, and Ethnic Archipelagos in the United States:
Methodological Considerations,” Journal of Cultural Geography 13:2 (1993): 13-29. This entire issue
is devoted to papers on this topic.
Richard L. Nostrand and Lawrence E. Estaville, eds., Homelands: Regional Geographies and American
Culture (Harrisonburg, Va.: The Center for American Places, forthcoming). Transcripts of the AAG
156
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
T. Anderson
sessions devoted to discussion of the homeland concept can be found in Richard L. Nostrand, “AAG
Session Report: The Homeland Concept,” American Ethnic Geography Specialty Group Newsletter 5:2
(1997): 12-14; Douglas A. Hurt, “AAG Session Report: The Homeland Concept Revisited (Part 1),”
American Ethnic Geography Specialty Group Newsletter 6:2 (1998): 11-13; Douglas A. Hurt, “AAG
Session Report: The Homeland Concept Revisited (Part 2),” American Ethnic Geography Specialty
Group Newsletter 7:1 (1999): 4-6.
Wilbur Zelinsky, The Cultural Geography of the United States, rev. ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice
Hall, 1992): 118-119.
Richard L. Nostrand, The Hispano Homeland (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992); Richard L. Nostrand, “The New Mexico-Centered Hispano Homeland,” Journal of Cultural Geography
13:2 (1993): 47-59.
Conzen, “Culture Regions, Homelands, and Ethnic Archipelagos,” 20.
D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of America, Vol. 2, Continental America, 1800-1867 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1993): 348-357, 385-418.
C.E. Sherman, Original Ohio Land Subdivisions (Columbus: Ohio Department of Natural Resources,
Division of Geological Survey, 1925): 89-90. Thomas Acquinas Burke, Ohio Lands: A Short History
(Columbus: Ohio Auditor of State, 1993): 23. Geoffrey L. Buckley, Timothy G. Anderson, and
Nancy R. Bain, “Living on the Fringe: A Geographic Profile of Appalachian Ohio,” Pittsburgh and
the Alleghenies: Precambrian to the Present (Washington, D.C.: Association of American Geographers,
2000): 141.
Hubert G.H. Wilhelm, The Origin and Distribution of Settlement Groups: Ohio, 1850 (Athens, Ohio:
Cutler Printing, 1982): 23-25.
Aaron Spencer Fogelman, Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in
Colonial America, 1717-1775 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996): 2, 4-6, 8, 51,
55-56.
William T. Parsons, The Pennsylvania Dutch: A Persistent Minority (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976):
19.
Oscar Kuhns, The German and Swiss Settlements of Colonial Pennsylvania (New York: Abingdon Press,
1900): 118, 120-121.
J. Gordon Melton, The Encyclopedia of American Religions, 3rd ed. (Detroit: Gale Research Company,
1989): 27-33; Parsons, The Pennsylvania Dutch, 19; Ralph Wood, “Lutheran and Reformed, Pennsylvania German Style,” in Ralph Wood, ed., The Pennsylvania Germans (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942): 87-102.
Fredric Klees, The Pennsylvania Dutch (New York: Macmillan Co., 1950): 75, 78, 86-89; Melton,
The Encyclopedia of American Religions, 27-33.
James T. Lemon, The Best Poor Man’s Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972): 150-180.
Robert F. Ensminger, The Pennsylvania Barn: Its Origin, Evolution, and Distribution in North America
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992): 50-106; John Fraser Hart, The Rural Landscape
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998): 213, 215. Also see John C. Hudson, Making the
Corn Belt: A Geographical History of Middle and Western Agriculture (Bloomington, Ind.: University of
Indiana Press, 1994).
For a much more detailed discussion on folk housing in the Middle Atlantic hearth see: Henry
Glassie, Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1968): 54-55; Allen G. Noble, Wood, Brick, and Stone: The North American Settlement Landscape, Vol. 1 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984): 40-48.
Russell Wieder Gilbert, A Picture of the Pennsylvania Germans (Gettysburg: The Pennsylvania Historical Association, 1958): 35-43.
Lemon, The Best Poor Man’s Country, 77, 84, 86-88, 93.
Mary Sue Leist-Parsons, Leist and Allied Families, 1690-1990 (Manuscript Copy, 1992): 4, 9-10, 25,
83, 113-115, 233, 299, 339, 351, 363, 369; Joseph Edison Pontius, The Ancestors and Descendants of
Jacob Franklin Pontius, 1873-1953 (Manuscript Copy, 1972): 1-56; Personal Interview With Gertrude
Noecker (Henry Reber’s great granddaughter), Lancaster, Ohio, 22 September 1999; Information on
the Dreisbach Family Genealogy can be found at http://www.gentree.com/databases/Dreisbach/
Dreisbach1.html/.
Robert D. Mitchell, Commercialism and Frontier: Perspectives on the Early Shenandoah Valley
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977): 52-55.
William K. Crowley, “Old Order Amish Settlement: Diffusion and Growth,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 68:2 (1978): 249-264.
The Creation of an Ethnic Culture Complex Region
157
23. Wilhelm, The Origin and Distribution of Population Groups, 23-25.
24. Hubert G.H. Wilhelm, “Midwestern Barns and Their Germanic Connections,” in Allen G. Noble
and Hubert G.H. Wilhelm, eds. Barns of the Midwest (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1995): 62-79.
25. L.H. Everts, Combination Atlas Map of Fairfield County, Ohio (Philadelphia: Gale Research Company, 1875); Hervey Scott, A Complete History of Fairfield County, Ohio, 1795-1876 (Columbus:
Siebert and Lilley, 1877). For a discussion on the uses and drawbacks of such sources, see Gregory
Rose, “Information Sources for Nineteenth Century Midwestern Migration,” The Professional Geographer 37:1 (1985): 66-72 and John C. Hudson, “North American Origins of Middlewestern Frontier Populations,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 78:3 (1988): 395-413.
26. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.,
1991): 99. See Hudson, Making the Corn Belt.
27. H. Roger Grant, Ohio on the Move: Transportation in the Buckeye State (Athens: Ohio University Press,
2000): 57-61.
28. Ensminger, Pennsylvania Barn.
29. For a detailed discussion of construction materials employed on Pennsylvania barns, see Allen G.
Noble, Wood, Brick, and Stone, Vol. 2 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984): 22-35.
30. Hubert G.H. Wilhelm, “Double Overhang Barns in Southeastern Ohio,” PAST—Pioneer America
Society Transactions 12 (1989): 29-36.
31. Noble, Wood, Brick, and Stone, Vol. 1: 52-55.
32. Gabrielle M. Lanier and Bernard L. Herman, Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic: Looking at
Buildings and Landscapes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997): 130-131.
33. Scott, A Complete History of Fairfield County, 122-144.
34. Timothy G. Anderson, “Czech-Catholic Cemeteries in East-Central Texas: Material Culture and
Ethnicity in Seven Rural Communities,” Material Culture 25:3 (1993): 1-18.